Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) has named Cynthia Whitney, MD, MPH as Principal Investigator and Executive Director. Whitney joined CHAMPS as Senior Advisor in 2018 and is a Professor in the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, Hubert Department of Global Health.

The results of CHAMPS testing offer an unprecedented level of precision and accuracy, especially if a child’s death was related to an infectious disease. Instead of only identifying major syndromes, like pneumonia, CHAMPS methods determine the specific pathogen that caused the pneumonia.

The MITS Surveillance Alliance’s Incentive Award program is accepting proposals for projects that would expand the use of MITS. The small grant program provides funding and MITS kits for approved studies. CHAMPS is a member of the MITS Surveillance Alliance Consortium, and participates in the Consortium’s work to standardize procedures and share best practices.

Worldwide, every day, 15,000 infants and young children die, with the majority of the deaths occurring in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. However, as a session at the 2018 International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) annual meeting highlighted, very little information is available regarding what actually caused or may have caused the deaths of individual children in these regions.

For the first time, the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Network is making available cause of death data from children under the age of five in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. CHAMPS cause of death data provide more accurate and precise information on infant and child deaths than is typically available and used...

It has been a busy time here in Harar, with the recruitment of new clinical team members in preparation for the start of mortality surveillance. The thirteen newly recruited clinical staff constitute of ten field workers, two health officers and one research nurse. They went through two weeks of induction training on Hararghe Health Research partnership (HHR) projects, and conducted site visits to Hiwot Fana hospital and the CHAMPS-renovated laboratory and pathology units.

“For us to make the next leap, in terms of deciding what interventions need to be prioritized,” says Dr. Shabir Madhi, director of CHAMPS’s South African site, “we need to know: Why is it, in 2016, we still have five million children dying? What are the causes?"

Bombali District is situated in the Northern part of Sierra Leone with a population of 606,183, for which women covers the greatest percentage of 310,263 according to the 2015 Sierra Leone Population and Housing Census. Bombali district has on record a district that has several myths related to child illnesses and deaths categorized as witchcraft and traditional beliefs etc.

Work is ramping up in Harar, with three shipping containers arriving to complete the installation and equipment needed in the laboratories; intensive "training the trainers" in the community for the social science team, and recruitment for the clinical team in preparation for the start of mortality surveillance.

The last couple of months have seen some important achievements. We have been given support from the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council for CHAMPS work in Ethiopia. The team traveled to Addis to discuss the work of CHAMPS with the Supreme Council, such that an authoritative legal opinion could be given from a ‘Mufti’ (legal scholar) for a Fatwa - a response to a question posed by an individual or a court of law, in this case on the work of CHAMPS and the acceptability of MITS.

Informatics is crucial to the CHAMPS project, as the informatics office provides the core infrastructure for transporting and housing key health data. In this podcast Senior Manager for Information Technology Patrick Caneer talks about how PHII and its partners manage data for CHAMPS.

The New Year (for both the Ethiopian and Gregorian calendars!) has brought more activity at our CHAMPS site in Harar. Social science and community engagement continues, whilst laboratory development is completed and preparations are made for clinical work...

'We want to know why our children get sick and die, which contributes to the high infant mortality in the country.’ This statement was a key highlight from community stakeholders during the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance's community engagement work in Sierra Leone in February.

CHAMPS Global Partners Board member Alan Lopez and Christopher Murray, co-founders of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD), have been selected for the John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, an international award honoring the “world’s top scientists who have made outstanding achievements in global health research.”

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most urgent global health challenges in Africa and Asia, where CHAMPS works. It is the ninth highest cause of death worldwide, and presents a special threat to young children. The World Health Organization’s 2016 Global TB Report estimates that one million children (<15 years) currently suffer from TB worldwide and that more than 210,000 die from the disease each year...

Losing a child is a terrible tragedy that no parent could prepare for. Sadly, for many parents in the places where the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network (CHAMPS) operates, this heartbreak is unacceptably far too common...

Champion for child health, Alan Lopez, serves as a Global Partners Board member for CHAMPS. In his work with the board and in his research, he fights to reduce child deaths all over the world, because every child deserves the opportunity to thrive beyond the age of five.

Every day the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) network is acutely aware of the millions of children who die before their fifth birthday. Young lives are cut short, in some cases to only a few hours, because in low-resource countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia many children are defenseless against preventable ailments like pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria...

Sierra Leone joins CHAMPS as the seventh site, adding new West African partners to the global CHAMPS network of over 100+ partners. Sierra Leone has some of the highest rates of child mortality in the world, and as a CHAMPS site will have access to life saving data and resources to address this dire public health challenge...

2017 has been an incredibly productive year for CHAMPS: a total of 6 CHAMPS surveillance sites have launched child mortality surveillance with minimally invasive tissue sampling (MITS) collection, CHAMPS sites in Mozambique and South Africa have begun convening local expert panels to assign causes of death (known as the Determination of Cause of Death or DeCoDe process)...

It is the warm, dry season in Harar, and we send sunshine to our colleagues and friends in cooler climes, particularly those who haven't yet had chance to visit us! Our team has also been out and about, with some members joining the CHAMPS Network Meeting in Maputo...

Members of the CHAMPS' Global Partners Board (GPB), an advisory board of international leaders in the prevention of child mortality and mortality surveillance, act as champions of child mortality prevention within their networks and organizations...

A global study on the hidden causes of deaths of children aged under five will soon be conducted in India, using "minimally-invasive" techniques and advanced laboratory methods, the ICMR chief said today...

The 2nd Annual CHAMPS Site Directors’ Meeting will take place November 13-15, 2017 in Maputo, Mozambique. The three-day meeting provides an opportunity for mortality prevention surveillance experts to share lessons learned and to make recommendations...

A lot has happened in Harar in the last couple of months, for CHAMPS-Ethiopia as well as national events. The social science team is now busy with focus groups and interviews across all sectors of the community and all geographies, from Hiwot Fana Specialized University Hospital to the furthest ends of Kersa DSS...

Over 100 public health leaders from around the world attended a panel on the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network’s vision, work and impact at the International Association of National Public Health Institute’s 2017 Annual Meeting in Rome, Italy...

The Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) network aims to track the causes of under-five mortality and stillbirths at sentinel sites in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia through innovative, integrated and contextually appropriate epidemiologic, diagnostic, and community approaches...

The Hon. Samba Sow, Malian Minister of Health and CHAMPS' site director in Mali, received the Roux Prize given by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in recognition of his work saving children’s lives through vaccines in Mali...

We have had a good couple of months and we hope you have too. Our social science team have been very busy, completing the first part of our community engagement programme. Meanwhile it is all-go preparing laboratories for child health, pregnancy and mortality prevention surveillance...

From fighting infectious disease in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to working in urban slums in Kenya as director of a regional CDC office, to now addressing Child Mortality globally, Executive Director of CHAMPS Rob Breiman has his sights set on creating international partnerships to tackle childhood mortality...

We are having a busy time in Harar and Kersa and want to share our news with you! Our Child Health, Pregnancy and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Program (CHAMPS) - Ethiopia starts with social science, whilst we develop laboratory and other capacity for future work to understand the causes of child death in the under fives and stillbirths...

Aid organizations and public health agencies are spending billions of dollars each year to save the lives of babies and children in developing countries. But they’ve been missing a key piece of information in their effort: What exactly is killing these children...

Public health leaders from around the world dedicate efforts to child health evidence-based policy change and dialogue during the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) workshop at the annual meeting of national public health institutes...

"Nearly 6 million children around the world die each year before the age of five. Why? A new initiative hopes to answer that question soon. It's called the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network, or CHAMPS...

In an age in which data are more plentiful and accessible than ever before, we are accustomed to basing our decisions on as much evidence as we can gather. The more important the decision, the keener we are to ensure that our research is thorough and our information is accurate...

There are places in the world where children under age five die at a staggering rate—more than fifty of every one thousand live births. And in some areas, including parts of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, that number is greater than one in ten. In the United States, the average child mortality rate is fewer than six in one thousand...

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation named Emory Global Health Institute, which houses the U.S. office of the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI), its lead partner in its new global health surveillance network aimed at preventing childhood mortality in developing countries....

"Bill Gates is launching a network of disease surveillance sites aimed at reducing mortality rates among young children. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the project with an initial sum of $75 million, outfitting centers with the latest lab equipment and medical staff...

When it comes to child deaths, the world has made great strides in the past 25 years. "In 1990, one in ten children in the world died before age 5," Bill and Melinda Gates write on their blog. But thanks to things like vaccines and better nutrition, "today, it's one in 20"...

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to create a network of disease-surveillance teams in poor countries to do “minimal autopsies” on children to plumb causes of child mortality and also possibly spot emerging epidemics, the foundation announced Wednesday...

Bill Gates is launching a network of disease surveillance sites aimed at reducing mortality rates among young children. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the project with an initial sum of $75 million, outfitting centers with the latest lab equipment and medical staff...